That TiVo you just bought is so 2004.
Just as New Zealand jumps on the TiVo bandwagon, Gizmodo is reporting on the inexorable decline of TiVo subscriptions in the USA. The drop is big enough to take TiVo right back to 2004:
Even without this news, TiVo has a very hard road to success in New Zealand. ISP exclusivity, expensive hardware, and a complete lack of exclusive content. Why would you bother?
Popularity: 15% [?]
Very bad comparison… TiVo in the U.S. is a subscription service, and in New Zealand it’s a FTA service. VERY DIFFERENT.
I’m pretty sure Hybrid TV isn’t relying on the FTA component to make it viable. They’ll be looking for on demand usage as well. Without any exclusive and knobbling the potential audience by ISP exclusivity is not helpful.
But here is the difference. In New Zealand people can buy a TiVo as a glorified DVR with extra features not available in other models – home networking (crap), movie downloads (Sony only). In the U.S. it’s only really good if you have the subscription while in New Zealand it will work as it is out of the box.
Obviously Hybrid TV will try to sell the on demand services – but you are not required to have it…
But there are far cheaper DVRs out there. What does Tivo give you for that extra ~$400?
@parsley
I haven’t used one yet, but apparently the UI is lovely. It certainly has to be better than the MySkyHDi PoS. Worst UI ever.
The UI is just ok – nothing exception. For example I tried to configure the TiVo remote to control my Sony Bravia LCD. You have to scroll down the brand list. Sony is perhaps the last one (or so it feels). There are hundreds of brands, it scrolls one page at a time, but the cursor stays at top, so it’s an infinite number of presses to get to Sony. Then the control codes won’t work…
Anyway, the TiVo desktop must be the wors PoS (Piece Of Software) ever developed. It fails miserably at transferring any content that is not in the TiVo drop folder – any other folder you configure will have its contents duly ignored.
And when a transfer happens it’s very very very very slow. Did you get it? It’s slow. Very slow.
You’d be surprised, have a look for a dual dvb-t tuner over here (that work with Freeview|HD) and tell me how you get on. The Next distributed one that came in was priced about the same.
@M Freitas
That’s really interesting. But surely the EPG and series link stuff is pretty swish? That’s what TiVo tend to hang their hat on.
Otherwise, it sounds like a HTPC is the best way to go for a Freeview|HD power user?
The EPG and the season pass are good. But I just ordered a Dell Zino HD yesterday to replace my Mac Mini as Media Center. If you want control and you have a decent sized digital library then you will get a better experience…
@David Cole
Ah right, didn’t realise it was dual tuner. The ones on the Freeview website start at $799. Tivo’s $920 up front, so still a bit more.
methinks there are some telecom/tivo employees posting anonymously looking at the statements here. I looked at tivo, my sky hdi and freeview, for now i'm on HDI till something better comes along.
wish we had Ice TV like in Australia… Tivo made a huge mistake going exclusive to one ISP, give how telecom rates in isp reviews it must have been ex government cronoyism at work